“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: PERFECTING BEGGING SKILLS

PERFECTING BEGGING SKILLS

If you truly believed in Canine Lives Matter you would not demean our “persuasive food transference” skills by referring to them as begging.

Don’t you ever stop to wonder we beg to make you feel benevolent! You are exercising kindness and compassion towards a “dumb animal”. Who is the dumb animal in this case!!!!

Many of us puppies are new to the food persuasion game. I used to bark obnoxiously with limited success. Sort of like a human accosting passerby’s with hands out moaning some phrase attempting to invoke pity.

No, I have found sitting quietly close to my mark with wide open eyes maintain total silence is highly effective. Like being part of the senior management team of a corporation. Success is blending in with humans not barking for a raise like middle management. Play the game and your profit sharing might include tasty morsels of bacon, chicken (watch out for those bones) or steak. Meat is king for dogs but we’ll settle for just about anything.

Look at this way I am not a poor street urchin and you are not Mother Tereza. I am on “your team” so treat me as such and toss me a morsel! And for God’s sake don’t make me resort to obnoxious and crude begging techniques.

RKS Literature: The Flamboyant Pleasure of a Country Bumpkin (Yoshida Kenkō)

“The man of quality never appears entranced by anything; he savours things with a casual air. Country bumpkins, however, take flamboyant pleasure in everything. They will wiggle their way in through the crowd and stand there aimlessly gaping up at the blossoms, sit under the trees drinking sake and indulging in linked verse making together and, finally, oafishly break off branches of a blossom to carry away. They will dip their hands and feet into clear spring water, get down to stand in unsullied snow and leave their footprints everywhere, and in short throw themselves into everything with uninhibited glee.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

RKS Literature: Truman Capote Defines a “Movie Star” (Truman Capote)

“Defined practically, a movie star is any performer who can account for a box office profit regardless of the quality of the enterprise in which he appears; the breed is so scarce that there are fewer than ten actors today who qualify for the title. Brando is one of them; as a box office draw, male division, he is perhaps outranked only by Willam Holden.”

Truman Capote, “The Duke in His Domain”, 1957.

RKS Literature: Marlon Brando on Analysis (Truman Capote)

“Have you ever been analyzed. I was afraid of it at first. Afraid it might destroy the impulses that make me creative, an artist. A sensitive person receives fifty impressions where somebody else may only get seven. Sensitive people are so vulnerable; they’re so easily brutalized and hurt just because they are sensitive. The more sensitive you are, the more certain you are to be brutalized, develop scabs. Never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything, because you always feel too much. Analysis helps. It helped me. But still, the last eight, nine years I’ve been pretty mixed up, a mess pretty much….”

Truman Capote, “The Duke in His Domain”, 1957.

RKS Literature: What Types of People Should Not Be Your Friends? (Yoshida Kenkō)

“There are seven types of people one should not have as a friend. The first is an exalted and high-ranking person. The second, somebody young. The third, anyone strong and in perfect health. The fourth a man who loves to drink. The fifth, a brave and daring warrior. The sixth a liar. The seventh, an avaricious man.

The three to choose as friends are-one who gives gifts, a doctor and a wise man.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

RKS Literature: Should One Be Concerned with Red Tongue Days Marked on the Calendar? (Yoshida Kenkō)

“The Ying Yang masters do not concern themselves with those days of the calendar marked ‘Red Tongue Days’. Nor did people of old treat the day as unpropitious. It seems someone more recently has declared it unlucky, and now everyone has begun to avoid it, believing that things undertaken on this day will miscarry. This idea-that whatever is said or done on this day will fail, that objects gained on the day will be lost and plans made will go awry-is ridiculous. If you count the number of failures that happen on an auspicious day, there you will find there are just as many. It is people that create good fortune and misfortune, not the calendar. “

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

RKS 2026 International Film: “The Blue Trail” (O Último Azul)

A Brazilian/Mexican/Chilean/Netherland production helmed by director Gabriel Mascaro presenting a dystopian panorama of humour and satire which is a gentle, silent and highly effective jab at ageism and massaged- “media managed” governmental oppression in society.

A Brazil where at age 75 you are “honoured” as “national living heritages” with your residence marked by a laurel and awarded a medal by the Brazilian state.

Brazil wishes to avoid its seniors suffering “a life of loneliness” and ensuring its younger workforce can concentrate on its work not having to worry about its elders. At 75 bearers of such age are forcibly transported to retirement “colonies”.

Less than discrete allusions to the Holocaust one might surmise the laurel on residences equating to the Star of David markings used in Nazi Germany and retirement “colonies” to concentration camps? We never see what a “colony” is but breadcrumb hints on the film’s trail may lead to a “Final Solution” conclusion.

Attempts at evading the mandatory “colonies” result in apprehension and removal in a small, motorized cage referred to as a “wrinkle wagon”.

Tereza (Denise Weinberg) is a 77-year-old awaiting transportation to a “colony” refusing the “honour” embarking on an evasive wild Amazonian adventure. There are blue drool snails depositing psychedelic slime, dishonest ultra light plane pilots, “nuns” plying the Amazon River selling virtual bibles and a fighting fish gambling joint named the Peixe Dourado (Golden Fish).

While there are those that trip out on blue snail drool Tereza is on an incredible road trip along the Amazon so beautifully photographed.

Influences here of “The African Queen”, “Easy Rider”, “Holy Days”, “Cool Hand Luke” and “Apocalypse Now”. I make the references and I’ll let you figure out why!

Is there a memorable highlight? Hard to answer as there are many but the trippy fighting fish adventure at the Peixe Dourado is a massive one that is right up there with the Honda and Hopper “Easy Rider” LSD sequence at the New Orleans graveyard.

You have the choice to be serious, morose, toss and turn at night contemplating a dismal future and pertinent societal happenings on the Brazilian Amazon or you can tuck that negative stuff in the back of your mind and enjoy with a huge smile on your face Tereza’s incredible journey.

There is such a phenomenon as a “fun” dystopian film!

Watch the tailer here https://vimeo.com/1161942532

Theatrical run commences in Canada 3April2026.

RKS 2026 International Film Rating 93/100.

RKS Literature: Perfect Regularity as Tasteless (Yoshida Kenkō)

“In all things, perfect regularity is tasteless. Something not quite finished is very appealing, a gesture towards the future. Someone told me that even in the construction of the Imperial Palace, some part is always left uncompleted.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: TALES FROM MY HOOD: NO WHEELS ON THE BUS TO GO ROUND AND ROUND

TALES FROM MY HOOD: NO WHEELS ON THE BUS TO GO ROUND AND ROUND

Bob and Fay’s grandson J can’t quite get his fill of the children’s book “The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round”. Twenty or thirty times a day sometimes.

Wheels on a vehicle remind me of a story Bob tells. One early morning walking Dylan the Westie he noticed two homes down a Jaguar placed on cement blocks without its wheels. They had been stolen he had later found out. How audacious! The rumour in the hood is that the owner, as CFO of a major corporation, had “aggrieved off” an employee who sought revenge.

The wheels on that Jaguar were not going round and round. They were stolen!

When Bob was a young lad growing up in Montreal his parents had friends that suffered a great tragedy. The husband was a senior executive in Montreal who was gunned down by an employee he had terminated. Pardon the deep philosophy here but I suppose it is preferable to have the wheels stolen from your car than have your life stolen from you.

RKS Literature: Avarice and the Great Fool (Yoshida Kenkō)

“Great wealth will drive you to neglect your own well-being in pursuit of it. It is asking for harm and tempting trouble. Though you leave behind at your death a mountain of gold high enough to prop up the North Star itself, it will only cause problems for those that come after you. Nor is there any point in all those pleasures that delight the eyes of fools. Big carriages, fat horses, glittering gold and jewels-any man of sensibility would view such things as gross stupidity. Toss your gold away in the mountains, hurl your jewels into the deep. Only a complete fool is lead astray by avarice.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?